The Snake PitA novel by MARY JANE WARD
Cassell and Company, London 1947

"Long ago they lowered insane persons into snake pits;
they thought that an experience that might drive a sane person
out of his wits might send an insane person back into sanity."

1947 DUST JACKET: "Long ago men tried to shock the insane
back into sanity by throwing them into a snake pit--a drastic
treatment which by its sudden terror was sometimes successful.
Modern methods, though superficially more civilized, often rely
on the same brutal shock to achieve their results.
This is the story of Virginia Cunningham who has suffered so
complete a nervous breakdown that she is out of her mind. It
is the story of her slow and painful return to sanity, told by
herself. We see the treatment she is given through her own eyes--hazily
and incoherently at first, for she cannot grasp what is done
to her, nor recognize the faces round her. Then the writing keeps
pace with the growing lucidity of the mind and shares the patient's
restless rebelliousness when she thinks she is better than she
really is. Finally there is complete return to normal and the
happiness of release to rejoin her husband.
This remarkable piece of writing is outstanding for its honesty
and its sincerity. The author has no axes to grind about the
mentally unbalanced or the treatment given to them, but has written
a book of astonishing power in which the reader feels acutely
every change of state and fortune along the patient's hard road
back to health. It is in no way a morbid, nor a medical book:
it is a feat of writing which the reader will find absolutely
absorbing."